Blast Injures Co-anchor, Cameraman

Both Were In Serious But Stable Condition From Head Wounds.

BAGHDAD — A face known to millions of Americans was among the casualties Sunday in Iraq, a stark reminder of the everyday dangers that people face in the war zone.

Newly installed ABC World News Tonight co-anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman were in serious but stable condition after being wounded when the vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad.

The pair were embedded with the 4th Infantry Division and were on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol near the town of Taji when the explosion occurred, the U.S. military said. An Iraqi soldier also was reported injured.

Woodruff and Vogt sustained shrapnel wounds to the head, and Woodruff's upper body also was injured. They underwent surgery at the U.S. military hospital in Balad and were flown to Landstuhl, Germany, for further treatment, the network said.

After they came out of surgery, ABC News President David Westin said in a statement: "We take this as good news. But the next few days will be critical."

The journalists' injuries came after the kind of attack that has been a frequent killer of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.

Roadside bombs -- or improvised explosive devices, as the military calls them -- accounted for about 60 percent of all U.S. casualties in the last six months of 2005.

Joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols, such as the one on which Woodruff and Vogt were traveling with two other ABC News crew members, are becoming more common in Iraq as the U.S. military embarks on a major effort to train the Iraqi army in preparation for drawing down its own forces later in the year.

The two journalists, who were said to be wearing protective body armor, helmets and ballistic goggles at the time of the blast, were in the hatch of an Iraqi vehicle, which left them more exposed. Small-arms fire reportedly followed the explosion.

Though Woodruff and Vogt were traveling in an Iraqi armored vehicle, most Iraqi army units travel in open pickup trucks, making them softer targets than the U.S. military.

"If you're going to cover the Iraqi military forces, you have to be with them," ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz said on This Week With George Stephanopoulos. "You have to see how they live. I will tell you one thing, a few months ago when I was there and we wanted to get into an Iraqi pickup truck, one of the American soldiers said: `You can't do that. It's way too dangerous.'"

As the highest profile U.S. casualty of the war to date, Woodruff has become part of the story he was trying to cover. Just eight days earlier, he told reporters at a press event in Pasadena, Calif., he was wary of the weight an anchor's presence plays in news judgment.

"If you do send an anchor into the field, you do have a tendency sometimes to overemphasize the story," he said, noting he hoped ABC would resist that.

Coming so soon after the abduction of U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, 28, a freelance correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, Woodruff's injury demonstrates the continued dangers with which the dwindling foreign press corps operating in Iraq must contend.

Since the war began in March 2003, 61 journalists have been killed, 42 of them Iraqi, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.